I love Greek mythology, Homer's poems, and the depth characters can have within them when you really read the stories, so I was hopeful for "Daughters of Sparta" to be all of that and more since it would focus on the women's perspectives instead of men. But all of the poetry and magic are removed in exchange for a more realistic-to-historic-Greek-life type of novel. Which certainly has its place and can be interesting. But the problem for me was it being so true to what historical Greek women's lives were probably like that nearly all of the interesting things happen off-stage and the women spend the book shut up in their rooms, occasionally hearing about stuff from far away. Like their historical counterparts, Klytemnestra and Helen have no say in any aspect of their lives, from where they will live to who they will marry. Despite being queens, they have no role in daily life other than ceremonial at the occasional feasts and religious celebrations. They have no value to their husbands outside of their ability to have children.
I didn't feel like Heywood really gave them even a glimmer of a rich inner life that they could hold on to themselves- there was no women's life shown behind closed doors that in any way gave the characters lives or personalities of their own. Once or twice a glimpse comes through- Klytemnestra tries to save a girl Agammemnon has enslaved, she vows vengeance against Agammemnon for killing Iphegenia and chooses to take an active role in ruling while he is away at war, Helen chooses what she thinks will be someone who sees her and talks to her when she runs away with Paris. But these seemed like brief moments and then we don't get growth on those choices. The women fall back into passive victim mode. And what made me just as mad was that when Helen was in Troy, the Trojan women don't acknowledge that Helen is a victim and that the war really isn't about her. They act as if everything is her fault (because it is easier to blame one person than strangers and ideas and circumstances).

If you are looking for a historical fiction of Greek life and the Trojan War from the women's lives, this is an accurate novel. If you are looking for lovely characters, strong women, growth, or really anything positive or uplifting, I wouldn't recommend this one.

Trigger warnings: physical abuse, emotional abuse, rape, violence, miscarriage, death of children

I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review

Giving voice to a face…
Claire Heywood, a scholar of the ancient world, brings to life the story of two sisters, Klytemnestra and Helen, in Daughters of Sparta who were pivotal in the demise of Troy. At the heart of this destruction was Helen, whose beauty was know around the known world and according to legend the cause of the Trojan War. Claire explains in her author’s note, “Daughters of Sparta therefore weaves archaeological reality with mythological tradition, but also imagines a new story to fill in the gaps left by each of these frameworks. At its heart the novel is not even a retelling of the war itself, but of the private lives of Helen and Klytemnestra, two characters whom I found to be either inadequately or unfairly treated across the ancient sources.”

Daughters of Sparta is a gripping story in its honest depiction of the lives and status of women, the cultural norms and expectations, and the brutality that occurred in all levels of life of ancient society. Klytemnestra and Helen have an affectionate and close relationship. This bond weaves its way throughout the story and is a connection that keeps them grounded and focused during many of the trials they face. Told through the eyes and minds of both sisters the perspectives are varied yet convey a common theme that women were only valued for their beauty and ability to produce children. Even as privileged royalty, their life is difficult and oppressive, and their journey will keep you engaged, challenge your ideas of Greek history and have you contemplating the differences between your life and theirs.

Claire’s background as a scholar gives Daughters of Sparta a mosaic of details on which to embed a dramatic and fascinating story. The legend of the Trojan War and the beautiful Helen is widely known, yet Helen has always been just a prop or catalyst in the retelling. Hearing from her and her older sister, in this fictional retelling, brings new life to an ancient story. The foil to the sisters, found in the kings fighting over this one woman, dampens the glory given to these men and reveals the savagery that often accompanies power and control. I love a great fictional adaptation of a historical event and Clair nailed in with Daughters of Sparta.

This story of two daughters and queens, Klytemnestra and Helen, provides a fresh perspective on the Trojan War and the reasons behind it, as well as the men who live on in legend as a result. While it did not provide any necessarily new content, it was a nice read into the Greek mythos and history. Definitely pick up this book if you enjoy: "Ariadne", "A Thousand Ships", or "Circe".

I love Greek mythology, but I did not love Daughters of Sparta by Claire Heywood. Presented as a reimaging or rather a behind-the-scenes glimpse of the story of Clytemnestra and Helen of Troy, it loses all the feel of the original myth. Clytemnestra is fangless, lacking the anger her story normally holds. She's too concerned with being a good girl/wife/daughter/queen/woman, which is not her if you are familiar with her story. As for Helen, she is a complete bore. There is no complexity to her character, nor does she have any common sense. She is as shallow as the myths hint. By Part III, I had no interest in continuing this tedious story, so I didn't.

I honestly found this book to be a little underwhelming, especially when compared to other books that retell The Illiad such as A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes and The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller. The characters were so dry and the writing felt almost clinical. I would have loved to see a retelling that gave Helen and Nestra more agency and stronger characterization.

I liked this novel, but there have been so many retelling of Helen and the war for Troy recently, especially from the voices of the women, that it took a while for me to get into. I generally liked this book and that it was from the women's points of view, but I would be more interested in her interpretation of other women in Greek mythology.

The imagined story of two sisters, the infamous Helen, and to my knowledge, the lesser known Klytemnestra. The tale as old as time, women married for political reasons and their constrained lives. Both women, however, seized at the chance for something better. That chance for Helen is Paris; their affair which launches the war between Sparta and Troy. Sadly, this chance at love was ill fated. Klytemnestra’s chance may have had a happier ending but with a price to pay.. the reading level of this book is quite easy. It could perhaps, be YA. So for an adult, it is a beach read. Thanks to NetGalley for a complimentary copy of the book in exchange for my honest review

This is very enjoyable. It's by no means a "Song of Achilles", but still. A realistic take on the women of the Iliad. Yes, the gods don't actually manifest and no one is fathered by Zeus the swan or anything like that. Mythology purists will no doubt be disappointed. But it was still an enjoyable read focusing on an oft-ignored point of view for one of the world's oldest known stories.

Overall, I thought this was a very well done retelling of Klytemnestra and Helen's stories. Tackling stories from the Iliad and the Odyssey has been very popular in the last few years, but they're not always great. Daughters of Sparta does a good job of evoking the atmosphere that often accompanies Greek mythology. The characterization of Klytemnestra really sets the stage for what eventually happens with her story, making her a much more sympathetic character than she appears to be in the Odyssey.

I was excited to pick up Daughters of Sparta because I am a big fan of mythological retellings, especially those focusing on the often-overlooked women from these tales. Unfortunately, this book takes all the interesting parts of a god-filled myth and made it boring. Neither Helen nor Klytemnestra are particularly interesting characters, and they alternating viewpoints and time jumps make it difficult to follow the story.

Thank you NetGalley for an eArc of this book!
Daughters of Sparta is a beautifully written tale of sisters Klytemnestra and Helen, both princesses of Sparta. The book, alternating points of view, begins in their childhood, and continues through the conclusion of the Trojan War. While gods are mentioned, it's more of the historical belief rather than any mythology coming to play.

I give this book 3.5 stars. It is extremely well written, and the descriptions of the clothing in particular stand out. At different times I really felt for Nestra and Helen, although the emotional connection wasn't consistent. I think having to do the whole '__ years later' multiple times made it harder to get to a 'can't put it down!' point. I really do appreciate having this women's perspective of what has always been presented as a male-centered series of events.

Feminist retellings of classical stories are popular because of the success of Miller's Circe. Not all of them live up to the artistry of Circe or The Song of Achilles.

The author of Daughters of Sparta makes it clear that she is writing a HISTORICAL retelling. She eschews the magical and the legendary in these stories and tells how life really would have been for these women, Klytemnestra and Helen.

The problem is that the genius of Greek literature in its epic and dramatic forms is that it is EPIC and DRAMATIC. What makes Klytemnestra such a powerful character is that she brutally slays her husband and his lover, yet does it in a way so that the viewer (since this is drama) cares for her and understands her actions. Similar with Helen: the face that launched a thousand ships!

But the author has decided to make them ordinary girls, then women--characters we modern women can identify with. They love their sister. They worry that their mother favors the other. They are precocious. They speak to one another as modern women do. The effort to make the Trojan War into "women's fiction" dulls the source material. I think it is possible to be feminist--honoring women's stories and experiences--while honoring the best parts of this male-authored body of literature that has spoken to men and women throughout history.

Wow! Another great book about the Greek Gods and Goddesses. I'm LOVING this trend. I have always been fascinated with mythology and I've been disappointed at the lack of fiction titles that feature this content. However, all of a sudden, it's everywhere. Hey! I'm not complaining.

This book is retells the siege of Troy. It was imaginative, fresh, and elucidating (given I didn't know much about the siege of Troy). If you like fiction about the Gods and Goddesses than you will love this title.

Helen and Klytemnestra are sisters destined for arranged marriages in order to further Sparta's political relations. However, the society they live in and the men they marry require subservience and obedience. Claire Heywood gives readers a realistic re-telling of the legends of Helen and Klytemnestra and the events that lead up to the battle of Troy.

This book is written with alternate POV between Klytemnestra and Helen. There was a lot of research done in regards to life in Greece, but with that risked having a somewhat dull narrative especially compared with other contemporary re-telling of Greek myths and legends. The writing was pretty easy to get through and the plot was clear, but the gods and goddesses readers may have been expecting were not present. This was, very much so, a re-telling with the emphasis on gender inequalities and the hardships both women face as pawns to the men around them. A good read for history buffs.

Oh my gosh, I loved this! Absolutely loved this.

I am a Greek mythology nerd and I love reading about the Trojan War. When I saw there was a book focusing on Helen and Klytemnestra, I couldn't hit that request button fast enough on Netgalley. Sure, we hear about the love story between Helen & Paris all the time, but we never really see it from the women's point of view. And I personally haven't read anything centering on Klytemnestra.

I loved the character work and the pacing in this story. The author depicted Helen in a way that I haven't seen often and I found it incredibly believable. I really liked that she wasn't the perfect ingenue who ran away for love, but she also wasn't the calculated harlot who tried to seduce everyone. Helen has been depicted in myriad of ways and I just really liked this one. She seemed more human to me. I didn't particularly like her, but I could understand her.

As for Klytemnestra, this was the character I was rooting for. She's always been kind of understated and I thought this book brought her to the forefront as a dutiful wife who then commits more to being the strong mother. I could be wrong, but I think most people who read this book are gonna root for her too.

I noted before that I also really liked the pacing. The Trojan War lasted 10 years but I don't want to feel as if I'm reading a book that takes 10 years to finish. This book is told chronologically with every few chapters going back and forth between Helen and Klytemnestra. Sometimes no time will have passed, sometimes it will span a few months, and there are 2 or 3 jumps that spanned years. I never felt jarred by the time jumps though. I really felt that it flowed and the narrative was just smooth. This is the kind of book that has the potential to be painfully slow, but I really think the author spaced it out well.

Man, totally loved this one. Definitely has potential to be one of my top reads of the year.

I truly adored this book. I felt like we really got into Helen and Klytemnestra's minds and I was 100% engaged in their characters and stories. I was so immersed that I forgot I already knew how their stories end, so I was waiting with baited breath for the conclusion, LOL.

I loved how their stories were not only sweeping epics, but that they were characterized by things like birth control, postpartum depression, etc - feminist retellings of Greek myths are not uncommon lately but I liked how this one stayed true to the story while still providing engagement.

Lots of trigger warnings for this one, and many disturbing scenes involving sacrifices and child marriage, but I think that's fairly regular for Greek retellings.

I will read anything else from this author!

Klytemnestra and Helen are daughters of Lord Tyndareos, King of Sparta. Klytemnestra as the oldest daughter is the heiress, and so is supposed to be the Queen of Sparta and stay with her family. But her father betroths her to Agamemnon, King of Mycenae, which means she needs to live in his kingdom. All this results in a feeling of betrayal, and fear she will likely never see her family again, since a married woman does not travel, and is the steward of her husbands’ household.

Helen, legendary for her beauty, gets betrothed to Menelaos, who is Agamemnon’s brother. As much as she appreciates her husband’s gentleness, she is frustrated with him not expressing his feelings. Without much conversation between them, she feels as she hardly knows her husband, but now that she is pregnant, he shows a lot of tenderness and she hopes it’s a new beginning for them.

When Menelaos welcomes friendship between two kingdoms, his and the one of Troy, it changes everything. Helen is enchanted by the handsome Prince Paris of Troy. His flattery makes her alive again, and she finds herself liking the attention. Meanwhile, Menelaos is forced to leave his kingdom and leave Helen to entertain the guests. Upon returning home from his grandfather’s funeral, he finds his palace ransacked and his wife gone. He just doesn’t know if she went willingly or forcefully. Now, all Greece unites in an effort to fight the rich and powerful Troy.

As the story alternates between two sisters, we get to know their thoughts and feelings well. This story is wonderful in exploring those aspects, giving voice to women who didn’t have any voice and any choice in decision making. Readers can certainly feel their frustration, disappointment, and joy. It touches you when Helen’s eyes are opened to the fate of the female slaves as she was too naïve to see what was going around her. Both women defy their husbands in their own way in secret. One dreams of more than just spinning wool, she dreams of weaving words, something meant for men only.

This is a straightforward and enjoyable read. This story is character-driven, and the plot is not filled with details of Greek mythology. The ending is touching; in a sense a war had to be fought in order for two people to open up to each other. It brings a human touch to this legendary mythology.

Review originally posted at mysteryandsuspense.com

Will not be recommending this book. A vapid and superficial retelling of some of Ancient Greece’s most famous myths.

Daughters of Sparta—thank you to NetGalley for the review copy—purports to tell the stories of Helen and Klytemnestra, daughters of king Tyndareos and queen Leda of Sparta. Dual alternating third person narrators follow the sisters chronologically from childhood through the end of the Trojan war, including their marriages, experiences with childbirth and motherhood, and war years.

Heywood leaves the gods out of the story, other than as vague powers to whom characters refer, in this sense taking a quasi-historical/materialist/psychoanalytic rather than fantasy approach to the Trojan war myth. The choices she makes to achieve this approach toward the characters and their experiences are interesting to think about, and her prose is engaging. I believe this novel will find an enthusiastic audience among readers who enjoy modern women’s narratives dressed in ancient Greek costumes.

The book focuses exclusively on Helen and Klytemnestra’s points of view. Because this focus meant the majority of the story was internal monologue of the women’s thoughts and feelings about their experiences, the third person narrative felt jarring, as compared to the intimacy of first person. I wondered if the intention was to bestow a sense of universality on these two women’s experiences. If so, it didn’t quite work. Heywood’s tendency to project modern worldviews and resentments into the past amplified the disconnect between narrative style and characters. It also felt reductive, as it stripped the myths and the various ways they were told across antiquity of their complexities, paradoxes, and ambivalent meanings.

This novel and I got off on the wrong foot with the epigraph, before the story even had a chance to properly begin. Heywood includes a quote from the Odyssey: “For there is nothing in this world so cruel and so shameless as a woman when she has fallen into such guilt as hers was […]/[…] her abominable crime has brought disgrace on herself and all women who shall come after—even on the good ones.”

As it is the presented, the quote seems to express the view of “Homer” in “the Odyssey.” But the quote is so decontextualized and chopped up as to be denuded of its meaning. If you’ve read the Odyssey, you might recall that the above words appear in book eleven as part of a speech by Agamemnon delivered post-mortem, from Hades, as he explains to Odysseus how he died.

Here is Agamemnon’s full reply (Richmond Lattimore’s translation, underlines are mine to correspond with what Heywood extracts from, if I’m not mistaken, Emily Wilson’s translation):

“Son of Laertes and seed of Zeus, resourceful Odysseus,/not in the ships, nor did Poseidon, rousing a storm blast/of battering winds that none would wish for, prove my destruction,/nor on dry land did enemy men destroy me in battle;/Aigisthos, working out my death and destruction, invited me to his house, and feasted me, and killed me there,/with the help of my sluttish wife, as one cuts down an ox at his manger./So I died a most pitiful death, and my other companions/were killed around me without mercy, like pigs with shining/tusks, in the house of a man rich and very powerful,/for a wedding, or a festival, or a communal dinner./You have been present in your time at the slaughter of many men, killed singly, or in the strong encounters of battle;/but beyond all others you would have been sorry at heart/for this scene, how we lay sprawled by the mixing bowl and the loaded/tables, all over the palace, and the whole floor was steaming/with blood; and most pitiful was the voice I heard of Priam’s/daughter Kassandra, killed by treacherous Klytaimestra/over me; but I lifted my hands and with them beat on the ground as I died upon the sword, but the sluttish woman/turned away from me and was so hard that her hands would not/press shut my eyes and mouth though I was going to Hades’./So there is nothing more deadly or vile than a woman/who stores her mind with acts that are of such sort, as this this one/did when she thought of this act of dishonor, and plotted/the murder of her lawful husband. See, I had been thinking/that I would be welcome to my children and the thrills of my household/when I came home, but she with thoughts surpassingly grisly/splashed the shame on herself and the rest of her sex, on women/still to come, even on the one whose acts are virtuous.” Book 11.405-434

Odysseus replies, “Shame it is, how most terrible Zeus of the wide brows/from the beginning has been hateful to the seed of Atreus/through the schemes of women. Many of us died for the sake of Helen,/and when you were far, Klyaimestra plotted treason against you.” Lines 436-439

There is more going on in this (comparatively) brief quote than I can account for here, but a few noteworthy points as they relate to Daughters of Sparta are as follows. First, obviously, the translations themselves are quite different: Through both the translation and Heywood’s extraction of it from its context, much of the nuance has been stripped out of the source text that has come down to us from antiquity, as evident in “good ones” (meaning women) vs. women “whose acts are virtuous.” It may not seem important, but the latter differentiates between women sum total being bad and bad acts that some women may perform. One thing this may reflect is the recognition of coexisting dualities, especially in Homer but also evident across ancient Greek thought. A particular quality, cunning for example, could be deployed for good or bad ends. Cunning itself is not necessarily inherently either good or bad but can become so through its application. Alternately, rather than morally neutral qualities, the modern Western mind especially (though not exclusively) tends to bifurcate, creating discrete categories for good and bad and then assigning qualities accordingly (honesty and cunning respectively, for example).

Aside from translation, within the Homeric world, Agamemnon has a reputation for hoarding all the rewards and honors for himself and attributing all of his bad behavior to the gods’ will. Further, as those who know Trojan war myth (including, presumably, the earliest hearers of the Odyssey) are aware, Odysseus will himself slaughter a dining hall full of Penelope’s suitors. These complicate Agamemnon’s words. Unlike Agamemnon, Odysseus will not stride confidently home expecting honors but sneak back into the palace in humble disguise. Odysseus will not be the dead man sprawled on the floor of the banquet hall. He will be the killer not the killed. He will survive because he will not make the same mistakes as Agamemnon.

All this is to say, Agamemnon’s claims about women in the speech Heywood pulls from are not coming from a reliable narrator. Odysseus’ response to Agamemnon is revelatory. He notes that the “schemes of women” are vehicles through which Zeus’ will is accomplished. If Agamemnon is not to blame for his bad acts because they were willed by the gods (as he claims in the Iliad), then why should he blame Klytemnestra for her bad acts? Would not they, too, be the will of the gods? Again, those who know Trojan war myth will know that the Trojan and Theban wars were, according to Hesiod, how Zeus chose to bring the Age of Heroes to an end. In this context, could Agamemnon blaming not only Klytemnestra but all women be seen as somewhat impious, a denial of how the gods work their will through humans? Agamemnon has also been known to compare himself to Zeus (Iliad 19.95), and his ancestors’ impiety has caused the entire family line to be cursed (as alluded by Odysseus).

This brings up one of my main issues with Daughters of Sparta: By removing the gods from the story entirely as agents, Heywood removes a prime mover within the Homeric narrativer. This accords with some modern views, but it denies an important feature (among others) of the myths, which is that they existed to explain the human condition, and central to this condition was a dynamic between immortal power and mortal bodies. What differentiates gods from humans in the mythical world is that the gods are more powerful and eternal. Thus humans, being weaker and mortal, can become instruments through which gods achieve their ends. A powerful wind can change a navy’s plans, for example, putting it on a disastrous course. The cycles of nature dictate farming and harvesting. And so on. In the Iliad, Helen gets pushed around and threatened by Aphrodite, who wishes Paris to be rewarded for having chosen her as the “most beautiful” and engineers events accordingly. Klytemnestra becomes the instrument through which Agamemnon is punished by the gods, for various offenses. Heywood tells us these two women were blamed, but ancient sources are far more nuanced. In the Iliad, Helen blames herself, but the Trojans do not. Not so in Heywood. Her Trojans despise Helen for having brought destruction to their gates.

Without the gods, Heywood relies on modern psychoanalysis to explain characters’ behaviors and feelings in ways that can feel not only reductive but at times a bit silly. One cringe-worthy scene involves Helen spitting on and kicking a rock in the cave of the goddess of Eilithyia, where Menelaos has brought her in hopes of having another child. But Helen does not want more children because of her disastrous experiencing giving birth to her daughter Hermione. Does it make sense that Helen would spit at and kick the sacred rock of the goddess of childbirth if she were afraid of giving birth? The cringe continues with Helen feeling more and more powerful as her birth control trumps this absent god. While this kind of female empowerment through control of the fertility process may inspire delight in modern readers, it rings false in this setting, if for no other reason than control of the fertility process is not a modern invention. It already existed in the ancient world. Why would Helen not see it as a gift from Eilithyia in answer to her prayers?

Heywood’s Agamemnon obsesses about winning “glory,” which is accurate broadly speaking. But without the interplay between mortality and immortality that exists in epic, the concept of kleos—what Homeric heroes fight for—loses its meaning and the heroes their motivation. What these heroes were trying to win was not some vague, undifferentiated “glory” but immortality through song (the aforementioned kleos). They want to be remembered and, through memory, to achieve a kind of immortality. Heywood chooses not to engage with the desire to be remembered as a genuine concern of humans. Her Agamemnon gloats that he was able to rally “all of Greece” by giving them “a cause”: “let them tell themselves they’re fighting for Greece, or liberty, or…whatever, and they’ll jump at the chance for some action.” Men just want to run around killing and dying in violent conflicts, apparently. For what reason?

Similarly, the East/West divide that Heywood seems to take for granted appears to have been murkier than she seems to assume. The ancient Greek-speaking world was not just on the European landmass, meaning I don’t know that all Greek speakers would have seen themselves or been seen as “western” (as is still true today of some Greeks). The highly fractured and antagonistic city-states within the ancient Greek-speaking world did not always side with each other in conflicts with non-Greek-speaking empires. Rivalries and antagonism surely existed, among Greek speakers and between Greek and non-Greek speakers, but ancient people did not have the same beliefs and biases as do modern nations, though they would surely have had their own.

In the interest of keeping this review shorter than the book, I will mention one last disconnect of significance: the pervasiveness of individualistic thinking that feels out of step with the ancient Greek world. Helen, who Heywood seems to have chosen to represent women who do not want to have children, mopes that she wishes for a husband who “might want her for herself alone, and not for the children she could give him.” This statement reflects an “individual in/vs. society” kind of thinking that feels more Western European post-Enlightenment than ancient Greek. It’s hard to imagine ancient people thinking of themselves in such individualistic terms. Male heirs had a practical purpose that Heywood seems aware of via Klytemnestra’s narrative: to project strength to potential enemies pondering violence against a community. This is not to say that ancient women might not want something other than to be wives and mothers or that every woman would want to have children, but to think of themselves as distinct from the communities they belonged to and exempt from implicit threats…this feels very modern. Helen wanting a different role within her community or wanting more roles for women to exist within the community would have made more sense than for her to be thinking about her individual relationship with her husband separate from its consequences on her community.

Similarly, at one point, the third person narrator asks, “What did men ever sacrifice for the sake of a woman?” If Heywood feels this way about men and/or this has been her experience of them, I am genuinely saddened, but I cannot say this is my understanding of men, that they act always and only for their own sakes. Again, this feels like a very modern expression of gender-based competition and/or antagonism. My experience as a Greek woman and of Greek women is that men and women have, historically, seen themselves as belonging to and being responsible for each other and have fought for each other in whatever ways they could to preserve, when possible, their families and communities. I do not believe it is fair or helpful to claim otherwise, nor do I believe that acknowledging this means we cannot also acknowledge the existence of gender discrimination and violence.

The cover of Daughters of Sparta advertises: “Two sisters parted. Two women blamed. Two stories reclaimed.” It’s probably fairly obvious at this point how I feel about the trope of contemporary women declaring that they are “reclaiming” ancient Greek women’s stories. Obviously, fiction writers can retell myths any way they choose. Personally, I wish they would not promote these retellings as some sort of reclamation project. I wish we would stop erasing ancient women so that we can claim to have discovered them. The reason we know about their stories is because they were told in antiquity, sometimes in more sensitive and nuanced ways than they are told today.

I would love to hear your thoughts on this book or these issues with retellings in the comments. Respectful debate and/or suggested readings are also welcome!

A Mild Retelling of the Heroines of the Trojan War

Sisters Helen and Klytemnestra, daughters of Lord Tyndaroes, King of Sparta, are famous in Greek mythology and tragedy for their roles in the Trojan War. Klytemnestra, married to Agamemnon, King of Mycenae, was wed first. Helen, supposedly the most beautiful woman in the world, was married to his brother Menelaos. In the book Helen thinks this will be a wonderful idea because as sister-in-laws she and Klymnestra may be able to see each other. As the narrative unfolds this turns out to be a vain hope.

The girls were raised in luxury, but little was expected of them aside from spinning, weaving and giving birth to an heir. This was a boring existence and Helen eventually escaped with Paris to a hopefully more fulfilling life. It led to the tragedy of the Torjan War.

The plot of the book is well known. The portrayal of the characters is at the core of this book. The author tries to make them examples of Bronze Age women. They come across as placid and accepting of the fate they have been dealt. This was not the way myth portrayed the sisters. Helen was a temptress and Klyemnestra was the raging mother set on revenging the death of her daughter Ipigenia, sacrificed by Agamemnon.

The book was well written and not difficult to read, but I was disappointed by the characters. Both sisters came across as so mild as to be non-existent, not at all they way they are portrayed in tragedy. The moving back and forth between the sisters giving their thoughts on whatever was happening was tedious. I had high hopes for this book, but they weren’t fulfilled.

I received this book from Penguin Random House for this review.